Brian Linse’s upset with the NY Times grave-dancing and general criticism from journalist bloggers:
Burning question of the day: What the fuck are Mickey Kaus and the journo-bloggers going to write about now that their favorite pinata, Howell Raines, is history? And more importantly, will anyone give a shit?
I guess the guys who are on the “inside” can be forgiven a bit of grave dancing glee, but we do have our limits. Where is the thoughtful and forward-looking analysis from guys like Kaus, Welch, and Layne? I love these guys, and they are all friends, but I’m disappointed in all of them. Anyone want to talk about what bringing the evil “liberal” Lelyveld back might mean? How about the impact that these events might have on the NYT’s traditional role as the drum major that most of TV news coverage follows? How about all the questions that I’m not smart enough to ask, but that we rely on our journalism pros to think of?
Dudes, FYI: Nobody outside of journalism geek circles gives a shit about the gossip!
Brian, FYI: it’s OK for journo-bloggers to write about journo stories on their blogs; that’s what they’re there for, and that’s why we like them. Techno-bloggers blog the inside baseball on tech, movie bloggers do the same for Hollywood, etc, etc, etc – that’s how the blogosphere works, people write what they know.
The sour grapes emanating from your corner has the plaintive and piquant frisson of one whose ox has been gored. You really can’t expect those who’ve been complaining about the Times’ liberal bias for lo these many years only to have their claims denied by partisans (like yourself) to be silent and dignified now that their analysis has been proved correct.
Losing the argument is a bummer, dude, but shutting up the winner or trying to foreshorten his gloating isn’t an option.
UPDATE: Brian clarifies that his beef is that the triumphalism is obscuring larger questions about the Times’ future. Fair enough, but who can say what happens next? The next turning point is the selection of permanent replacement for Raines, since Lelyveld is merely an interim boss, and once that’s been made public, we probably will be commenting on what comes next. There’s already been a lot of commentary on who follows Raines, and we’re pretty sure it’s not Andrew Sullivan.
When are Kaus and Glenn Reynolds going to start investigating bias at the Washington Times, Fox News, and the NY Post? Oh yeah, that’s right. They only bash papers if they have a LIBERAL bias. The problem I have is many media-bloggers only criticize outlets that have a bias that favors ideologies or view they disagree with. They should either be fair and criticize both, or at least give the Times and Washington Post credit for at least attempting to be objective.
The sour grapes emanating from your corner has the plaintive and piquant frisson of one whose ox has been gored.
Damn, Richard, that’s a great sentence !
But RB, dude, journo-bloggers writing about journo-stories is exactly what I want the boys to do, instead of inside gossip based on personal grudges against people most readers have never even heard of.
I agree that bloggers should write what they know. That’s why I cover a rather narrow range of topics myself — I don’t know much.
Also, I have never been a defender of the NYT, as the last graph of my post clearly states, and the CW is that Lelyveld is more liberal than Raines, so I should be happy, right?
Wrong. the NYT is not the purely partisan liberal house organ that so many on the right believe it is. What about the Lelyveld Whitewater snipe hunt? Wen Ho Lee?
I was having a bit of snarky fun at the expense of a few friends, but I do believe that there are important issues here that are outside of my area of expertise, and I’d love to hear what the journo-dudes think about the substantive stuff.
“plaintive and piquant frisson”
I frickin’ love that, bro!
Oh, and I second what Mr. Sense said above.
Don’t go changin’…
xoxo
Perhaps if Brian and Mr. Sense would acknowledge that people have worked for decades to document a left-bias in the mainstream press, only to be pooh-poohed, patted on the heads, and called blinkered right-wing morons, talking about the issue wouldn’t be second nature to some people.
Indeed, many still sit and say, “lies, lies, right-wing lies!” when confronted with the evidence. It gets really old. I used to be a leftist like Richard and, like Richard, their closed-mindedness on issues like this helped to drive me out of the fold.
You want me to acknowledge that there’s some right-wring bias in some of the press? Absolutely no problem, because I know it happens, and I’ve talked about it. But you don’t therefore get to take the cheap way out and say, “well see that proves it’s balanced,” when it proves no such thing. It proves there are different biases in different areas.
Besides, what’s to investigate at the Washington Times? They acknowledge that they’re a conservative paper. So does the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning Herald. The Washington Post and several other respected papers acknowledge they have a left tilt. That’s perfectly okay too.
The point is they acknowledge it. And none of them gets to drive the mainstream news coverage like the New York Times does.
Or used to.
The interesting thing about the Times story is how the management’s ideological blinders led the paper into a management fiasco. Unacknowledged bias is scarcely different from delusion, and when the Raines/Boyd/Pinch team allowed their collective delusion that only the white man can do wrong to guide their paper, they crashed on the rocks of a huge credibility crisis.
It’s similar to what happens when activists use twisted advocacy research to justify a bad law, and the law then produces perverse effects.
So it’s not just a case of being biased, it’s a case of being wrong on the whole question of race, oppression, collective guilt, and affirmative action. Nobody wants to have surgery done by an affirmative action doctor, for god’s sake.